There's some pretty vicious comments on that article!
Personally I am mostly interested in Asian history. We know that South Asian and Tibeto-Burman people have been milk and cheese consumers for a long time, as have the Central Asian peoples including the Mongols, who are said to have actually preferred liquid foods to solid ones.
These days, I know first hand that a lot of people in China are getting stuck in to milk products for the first time. How can this be, if they should keel over in pain and indigestive flatulence? The only person I've ever seen mass-produce cheese in an apartment was a Burmese friend in China, who I'm sure wasn't after the lactose for its apparent usefulness in diluting heroin! Wikipedia states: Some studies indicate that environmental factors—more specifically, the consumption of lactose—may "play a more important role than genetic factors in the etio-pathogenesis of milk intolerance" ... ie. the intolerance notion is largely bullshit and people can adapt to lactose. That seems to fit the observations.
Anyway, interesting to ponder... I went and polished off a block of New Zealand cheddar to celebrate. (Saving Roquefort for a salad tomorrow, then it's off to Indonesia where cheese is no doubt harder to find!)
Personally I am mostly interested in Asian history. We know that South Asian and Tibeto-Burman people have been milk and cheese consumers for a long time, as have the Central Asian peoples including the Mongols, who are said to have actually preferred liquid foods to solid ones.
These days, I know first hand that a lot of people in China are getting stuck in to milk products for the first time. How can this be, if they should keel over in pain and indigestive flatulence? The only person I've ever seen mass-produce cheese in an apartment was a Burmese friend in China, who I'm sure wasn't after the lactose for its apparent usefulness in diluting heroin! Wikipedia states: Some studies indicate that environmental factors—more specifically, the consumption of lactose—may "play a more important role than genetic factors in the etio-pathogenesis of milk intolerance" ... ie. the intolerance notion is largely bullshit and people can adapt to lactose. That seems to fit the observations.
Anyway, interesting to ponder... I went and polished off a block of New Zealand cheddar to celebrate. (Saving Roquefort for a salad tomorrow, then it's off to Indonesia where cheese is no doubt harder to find!)